Moire question for those shooting a lot with GH3 in "event" work

[Ron Fabienke]

Long form event shooting such as for weddings always involves many scenes and back drops, and often as well when something important is happening that you must get recorded, your scene or backdrop behind the principal subject of the shot has no wiggle room for different potential "good" angles for the shot. In that quick moment you need to be recording. Or "not so quick" moment such as where you might be locked into for a location shooting a ceremony with what is going on in the background. Or even a bride's veil?

Just shooting different subjects in random test fashion with the GH3 many of them will pick up on a pattern in the overall frame and you can see the moire pattern shimmering as you're shooting. Do the people using Canons and Nikons have this same frequency of moire popping up in their scenes? I know I've read that the anti-aliasing filtering was kept low in the GH3 to keep the quality of its still shots high, in addition to all the great video features the camera offers.

My question is for those of you who have already shot and are continuing to shoot a lot of event work with the camera, how are you getting along with this and what are your tips or your mindsets in minimizing these instances? What do you do in those instances first mentioned, where you have no other angle options for shots you have to get as they happen in real time, which contain sections of the frame with some moire going on? Is anyone getting complaints on their finished footage over this?

Is it correct that there is no good post processing fix devised yet to take out moire after the footage has been shot?

Thanks for any thoughts or tips. This seems to me to have the possibility of being a big issue but maybe I am making the incidence of its occurrence out to be more than it really is.

[Noa Put]

Is it realy that much visible? I thought the gh3 would display much less moire then the first gen canon dslr's did. About removing moire, no that is not possible as far as I know. Moire has been a dealbreaker for me as well but as I use a 550d I have a reason to complain. :)

[Dan Carter]

Avoid shooting the GH3 in All-I 72Mbps and moire will be extremely rare. I've yet to see it with 50Mbps IPB.

Good shooting.

[Ron Fabienke]

^^^ HA!! Dan that's part of what prompted this question is the other day out in front of my house I was shooting my very first test shots with 72mbs intra frame to see what it looked like, and shingles on roofs of other houses were doing that noticeably. Good to know about 50mbs MOV files not so much as that is what I normally shoot, or hopefully not much at all.

Any other comments from others' real world field experiences with event work so far with the GH3 and any moire issues, would be much appreciated as well.

[Jeff Harper]

Moire is such a non-issue with these cameras. I noticed moire in the LCD while filming a time or two, but found the footage to be free of it. Ron, if you haven't looked at the downloaded footage of the shingles, do so, and let us know.

[Ron Fabienke]

Hi Jeff
OK I loaded it to my fast 2 3TB Hitachi drives RAID 0 setup in a fast Mac Pro that's got a huge bunch of RAM, not that I think that means anything here ....just in case.

Shots of busy flowers, bougainvillea and the like in front of the house.....no problems. But shots across the street and down the street ..... the 4 houses with composition shingle roofs with the random pattern type shingles which were in those shots all have moire "big time". Usually I shoot 1080 30P or 60P MOV files at the 50mbs. These test clips were at the 1080 24P all intra 72mbs.

[Dan Carter]

Originally Posted by Ron Fabienke

^^^ HA!! Dan that's part of what prompted this question is the other day out in front of my house I was shooting my very first test shots with 72mbs intra frame to see what it looked like, and shingles on roofs of other houses were doing that noticeably. Good to know about 50mbs MOV files not so much as that is what I normally shoot, or hopefully not much at all.

Any other comments from others' real world field experiences with event work so far with the GH3 and any moire issues, would be much appreciated as well.

You've discovered the details of the GH3 moire issue Ron. Shooting 72Mbps All-I close-ups is usually successful, but wide detailed shots are full of moire. 50Mbps IPB 1080/30p produces stunning. moire free clips.

I've revisited many locations which produced moire in other Panasonic and Canon cameras I've owned, and the GH3 50Mbps images are moire free.

This may be a helpful example:

Kaua'i, Hawaii on Vimeo

[Ron Fabienke]

"This may be a helpful example:"

Dan that would be the understatement of the year to date possibly, for anyone such as myself being unduly worried about any moire issues with the GH3. Really, I'm honored that a question of mine here brought a response with such an answer in the form of this really sweet piece you have put together. I can only imagine before all the compression on sites gets to it what the footage is looking like at its best off your drives.

For sure. Many opportunities with roofs in there even and many other places to exhibit moire if it was going to do it. Zip. Nothing of any note. Might have seen a hint of a shimmer in the bottom of the gal's dress in the right of the frame performing but it was next to nothing. Probably lots of other places where it could have popped up besides the roofs but nothing. Thanks so much for the "see for yourself" answer and beautiful little piece.

Was your footage all 30P or 60P? Or a combination, maybe for slow motion later with 60P?

[Bill Bruner]

Originally Posted by Dan Carter

Avoid shooting the GH3 in All-I 72Mbps and moire will be extremely rare. I've yet to see it with 50Mbps IPB.

This is probably why I never see moire from the GH3. All I shoot is 1080/60p 50mbps IPB .MOV.

[Dan Carter]

Originally Posted by Ron Fabienke

"This may be a helpful example:"

Was your footage all 30P or 60P? Or a combination, maybe for slow motion later with 60P?

Happy to hear the project was helpful Ron.

This was shot 1080/30p, slow and fast motion using the "Frame Rate" modes of 40% & 300%.

Thanks for watching.

[William Hohauser]

72mbs from my experience is a waste of chip space with no real improvement in quality in most shots. In fact I found that there is more noise in 72mbs in some instances. Why I don't know. If you really want high quality, an external HDMI recorder is a better, although pricy, option.

[Roger Keay]

This is a very useful thread. I had never linked moire with compression rates but it makes complete sense. Three key factors in video compression are motion, detail and video noise. System designers can't do much about motion but effective filtering can tame noise and reduce detail which results in a better picture overall. A softer picture with minimal macro-blocking is preferable to more detail with macro-blocks. The viewer sees the compression artifacts but doesn't miss the detail so filtering is a good approach. The various posts indicate that the pre-compression video filtering is reducing moire by reducing detail.

W. Hohauser notes that he finds more noise at 72 Mb/s in some shots than would be present at lower bit rates. The likely explanation is that pre-filtering removing the noise at lower bit rates.

I have various DSLRs that I use for shooting video. I have seen very visible moire from my Canon 6D off regular patterns particularly roof tiles. Lower bit rates may be helpful with this camera.

[Ron Fabienke]

^^^ Yep on the "motion" contributing. Could see a little moire on some of same roofs mentioned above even at 50mbs with MOV files at 1080 30P, IF I was not holding the camera steady with the stabilization in the Panny 12-35 zoom lens. So if need the shot with a potential moire pattern, or if need it stationary and stable period for what you are shooting, use a tripod.

[Bruce Reynolds]

here's a wedding trailer with lots of different backgrouds and movements, filmed with 12-35mm lens

Nidhi & Pratik's 2 day wedding celebration remixed, Royal Pacific Hotel Orlando on Vimeo